Gulliver's Fifth & Sixth Voyages 1732 Studios

Hungarian · Capillária

Negyedik fejezet

Chapter Four

44 sentences

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  1. 1

    The indifference of the natives.

    Athea · determinerdeterminer of bennszülöttek
    bennszülötteknativesbennszülött · noun, nominative, pluraldepends on közömbössége
    közömbösségetheir indifferenceközömbösség · noun, nominative, singular, third-person singular possessorhead of the phrase
  2. 2

    The language of the country.

  3. 3

    The oihas.

  4. 4

    A few words on the Author's boundless love of his country, and on the folly of nature.

  5. 5

    The bible of the oihas.

  6. 6

    The bulloks.

  7. 7

    It was only some months later, toward the close of the first quarter of my sojourn in Capillária, that I came to grasp the full significance of all that had, at that first banquet, so utterly confounded and dismayed me.

  8. 8

    I have no wish to weary the reader with a detailed history of these few months: how I accustomed myself, notwithstanding my forty years, to breathing by means of gills; how I came to know the natural laws of this country; how I discovered, after much misapprehension and surprise, the key to that marvelous effect the natives had produced upon me; how I came to understand their peculiar customs; how I found my place among them in society; and how at last I learned their tongue well enough that afterward, by the method of direct intercourse and exchange of ideas, I might confirm and enlarge upon all that observation alone had until then allowed me only to surmise.

  9. 9

    My progress was greatly hindered by that incomprehensible and well-nigh incredible indifference with which the natives received my appearance in their country.

  10. 10

    It was probable from the very first moment — and I later proved it both to them and to myself — that a land-dweller such as myself had never before set foot in this province of the Ocean floor, at least no living man (as for the victims of shipwreck, of these I shall have occasion to speak hereafter).

  11. 11

    All things considered, my appearance among them was as rare an occasion, and as great a novelty, as if, let us suppose, some man from Mars were to come ashore one day in London or Paris — and I must own that in the first days I was much occupied with the vain consciousness of glory, that to me had fallen the rare task of representing the whole human race among such intelligent beings, who up to that time had known nothing of my sex.

  12. 12

    I prepared myself, in my own mind, as to how I should play out the difficult and weighty diplomatic role that lay before me — how I should see to it that the interests of my beloved country were ever kept before my eyes, how I should satisfy their avid curiosity with tact and dignity, and how, in general, I should comport myself as the center of interest.

  13. 13

    I was soon obliged to discover, not without some bitterness of disappointed self-regard, that all this inward preparation went for nothing.

  14. 14

    The ladies betrayed by no sign whatsoever any particular interest in who I was or whence I came.

  15. 15

    Having felt me thoroughly over, and indeed, as I have already mentioned in the previous chapter, one of them even bit me, as if to learn whether I was edible, and if so, of what flavor — they soon left me to myself, and resumed, before my very eyes, that occupation of theirs, then incomprehensible to me, so trifling and childish.

  16. 16

    After that singular dinner, likewise already mentioned (which, incidentally, I left hungry, sickened by the strange fare), I made one further attempt to draw their attention upon myself.

  17. 17

    I rose to my feet, and, perceiving that their tongue belonged to none of those language-families known to our universities, I endeavored, by every manner of sign and symbol, to explain to them that I came from a distant country, and that my foremost desire was, to enrich the history of travel-narratives, to acquaint myself with their customs and forms of government, while at the same time enlightening them upon all those matters of which they must necessarily know nothing.

  18. 18

    But after my very first words I perceived that they were not attending to me at all.

  19. 19

    They broke in upon me with small, chirping cries — some leapt up and fell to dancing; others sucked upon little sweets — until at last the whole company rose up and, in a great swirl, wheeled away into the neighboring hall, leaving me behind at the table, confounded and ashamed.

  20. 20

    Whoever has a wife, or has had prolonged dealings with women, knows that curious sensation, when a man sets himself to speak sensibly and logically, builds up a chain of reasoning, and, just as he would triumphantly arrive at the conclusion that should crown the splendid edifice of his arguments — her ladyship suddenly says, pardon me, one moment, and rushes off to the kitchen, or vanishes behind the door of some linen-draper's shop, only to return half an hour later, while you still stand in that selfsame spot, waiting impatiently for the moment when you might at last finish your discourse — and from her cheerful prattle, and her whole bearing, you discover, to your dismay, that she no longer has the least notion that you were in the middle of saying something when she left you standing.

  21. 21

    You ponder the matter, and feel ashamed to remind her what it was about, until at once you begin to feel that it was not, after all, of such great importance — for had it been, she would hardly have forgotten it so easily.

  22. 22

    All that I set down briefly in what follows, then, to furnish the reader with some notion of the laws of Capillária, I came to learn entirely through my own private diligence, without anyone troubling themselves as to whether I yet knew all that I needed to know, or making the least effort to hasten to my assistance — indeed, they scarcely troubled themselves as to whether I was present at all or not.

  23. 23

    Capillária, or the country of women, as I named it to myself, occupies roughly that portion of the Ocean floor lying between the United States and Norway, at an average depth of some four thousand meters beneath the surface of the water.

  24. 24

    The warm currents render its soil peculiarly suited to every kind of animal and vegetable growth — the study of its fauna and its fossils permits the inference that it is one of the oldest strata of the earth, where, many thousands of years ago, at a time when the greater part of the dry lands was a desolate and uninhabited, burning waste, the prehistoric animal world already flourished in rich and varied forms.

  25. 25

    As to when the natives themselves migrated hither, or how long they have dwelt here, I was able to learn but little — the inhabitants of Capillária, the oihas, as they call themselves, know nothing of the science of history, and feel no need to cultivate traditions.

  26. 26

    As to the race itself (I find it exceedingly difficult to express myself so as to be understood), its chief peculiarity lies not so much in its difference from the human race as in the marvelous fact that the oihas are all of one sex — and, as I had occasion to satisfy myself, that sex is women, or, if one prefers, females.

  27. 27

    And moreover, expressly and to an intensified degree, only that; this must be emphasized without delay, lest the learned should suppose some single-sexed race whose propagation proceeds, after the manner of the lower animals, by some means of self-fertilization or sporulation.

  28. 28

    Of this, as I satisfied myself, there is no question whatsoever; the propagation of the oihas is every bit as two-sexed as that of every higher mammal, only that...

  29. 29

    And at this point I must premise something, must explain something, must have recourse to a few comparisons, lest my ardently loved countrymen, and the proud men of my beloved sex, accuse me of fabricating false data unworthy of a travel-writer, or of distorting genuine observations through faulty and superficial interpretation, so as to allege the possibility of phenomena that would deeply wound the noble cult of masculine pride, and would, in its just and rightful self-regard, assail the lord of the world — man, the creator and conqueror — whose boundless courage and perfection is even in our own day triumphantly attested by so many glorious battles, sieges, brilliant advances, valor that scorns death, and radiant heroic deaths.

  30. 30

    Would that they might understand that I, the humble traveler and surgeon, desire for myself no worthier calling than to divert my valiant comrades, the heroic English soldiers, with a few modest observations in their hours of rest — and if the fairer-souled daughters of my country should likewise read my simple travel-narrative with pleasure, I shall thereby have achieved more than I deserve.

  31. 31

    But I must hold fast to the truth, for I am blessed neither with eloquence nor with the brilliant gift of imagination — I must therefore make up to the reader for the want of these by assuring him that my modest data, gathered in the course of my wanderings, if uninteresting, are at least reliable, and may be verified by anyone.

  32. 32

    Now then — once more I beg the cultivated male reader to endeavor to consider, with scientific objectivity, nature's peculiar sports, and not to take to himself what she teaches — let him be indulgent toward nature, which, as we know, has not been endowed with that gift of reason and wise discernment that adorns the lord of the world — nature has attended no university, and holds no doctoral diploma; nature is unlettered and untaught, and stands in want of that proud consciousness and self-regard — let us forgive her, then, for permitting herself coarse and unpolished jests, and for carrying these, on occasion, so far that they amount to nothing less than disrespect toward noble man, and — let it be said plainly — toward the standards of the English constitution and the English laws, of which she appears indeed to know nothing.

  33. 33

    Such jests, for example, are these: that there exist certain species, chiefly among the lower creatures of the sea, whose females are considerably larger and more developed than the males, contrary to all custom and propriety.

  34. 34

    There is a certain species of sea-spider whose female is twenty or thirty times the size of the male, and as a consequence of this, according to the unlettered and — let it be said openly — inhuman custom of these creatures, it frequently happens, indeed almost invariably happens, that the female, should he come within her sight, simply seizes and swallows the male whole, who for his part does his best to hide from her, whenever the necessity of propagating the species compels him to seek out his mate.

  35. 35

    The same has been observed in another species of fish, whose male is so small in comparison to the female that, out of fear of her, he takes up permanent residence in the farther orifice of the female's intestinal canal, and counts it his peculiar good fortune that the organs of the female necessary for propagation happen to be situated in that very place, and not, say, between her eyes — in which case he should have no time to accomplish his business, for his cruel and barbarous mate would devour him first.

  36. 36

    The mantis religiosa, for instance, which common folk call the praying insect, or the devout cicada, does this very thing: during mating she turns her head backward, and simply bites off and eats the head of the male, weaker and less developed than herself — which is a curious sort of devoutness, at the least.

  37. 37

    But I might adduce countless further examples to justify a certain remark of Opula, queen of the oihas, with whom I once had the good fortune to dispute on this very question — a remark which, if not forgivable, is at least understandable.

  38. 38

    This excellent lady, then, who, as a true oiha, knows neither history nor tradition, nor wishes to know them, once, when I spoke to her of our history, and chiefly of the sacred traditions of the Bible, in connection with the creation of man — gave expression to her astonishment that we should picture this symbolically in such a fashion, that man, Adam, existed first, and that from one of his body's parts, or, as the Bible has it, from his rib, woman, Eve, was made.

  39. 39

    This symbol, in her opinion, stood in contradiction to the teaching of nature, and to all experience.

  40. 40

    She, quite to the contrary, were she ever to occupy herself with so idle a matter — though hitherto she had felt no need of it — would rather picture the thing in the only way it could possibly be: namely, that in the beginning was the Oiha (in their own tongue this signifies Man, the Perfection of Nature, and even more than this), a being of their own kind, who was fertilized by herself and propagated, just as we still see today among many primitive species.

  41. 41

    For reasons more glorious, more convenient, and chiefly — for this is to them the foremost consideration — more aesthetic, the primal oiha, that is, in our own tongue the primal female, eliminated a certain uncomfortable and unsightly organ, which performed the office of self-fertilization within her own body, and in time detached it altogether from her frame — and ever since, this organ, which we, with great pomposity and presumption, call the male, being nothing other than a separate part of the body of the female: this member lives on, after the manner of some sort of parasite, in the vicinity of the oiha, possessed of no independent function, in an eternal, ignorant, and helpless yearning to be reunited once more with the body from which, as unworthy, it was torn away and disowned.

  42. 42

    It must be granted that this terrible and disrespectful error of the queen's is rendered comprehensible by a fact which I shall set forth more fully in the following chapter, and which I here set down baldly and simply.

  43. 43

    It is this: that in Capillária the male, the other sex, which among us holds dominion, exists in a form utterly degenerate, a stunted and dwindled little monstrosity, in the shape of a despised and scorned little domestic animal — his body not one fiftieth the size of the oiha's, and his life given over, wholly at her mercy and pleasure, to the oiha.

  44. 44

    They call this domestic animal the bullok — and I beg the reader not to feel faint of stomach if I now inform him that those small monsters which I beheld, in the openings of the tower, on my way to the palace, and which I afterward caught sight of, upon my plate, beside the laid table, were none other than such bulloks, in their natural size and development.

The particulars

The text
Utazás Faremidóba / Capillária, Frigyes Karinthy. Capillária.
Translation
Public-domain Hungarian (Karinthy, d. 1938; published 1916 and 1921). English translation © 2026 1732 Studios, LLC.
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Two whoopie pies and a pine. An inside joke.